Discipline Priest Healing Mythic+ Tips — Dragonflight 10.2

If you are unfamiliar with Mythic+ and its associated general mechanics, you can read more about it on our dedicated Mythic+ page below.

For assistance with gearing your Discipline Priest for Mythic+ or other content, please look at our gearing guide.

Your primary playstyle in Mythic Plus will revolve around rotating between casting Power Word: Radiance followed by a cast sequence of DPS spells to utilize the Atonement provided. Single target applications of atonement are generally not nearly as valuable due to how powerful Radiance is, but occasional use of Flash Heal with Surge of Light and Power Word: Shield will be utilized. Renew is not a very strong spell in Mythic Plus content and should rarely be utilized outside of niche scenarios.

Your DPS windows following your Radiance casts will often involve a Shadowfiend/ Mindbender and Mind Blast window giving you multiple, significant amplifiers to your offensive spells, making your Atonement healing very significant. When you find targets in execute range, Shadow Word: Death becomes a very powerful spell providing significant damage and healing through Atonement.

The main difference between healing in dungeons versus raids is that a single cast of Power Word: Radiance covers the entire group. Due to this, ramping does not exist as it does for raiding. This allows Discipline to be a much more reactive spec like other healers. We can still benefit from applying shields/damage reductions early, but it is much easier to heal unexpected damage comparatively. Due to this, the misconception that Discipline Priest can not handle mistakes from your group or unexpected damage is largely untrue.

Discipline's healing rotation remains the same for Normal, Heroic, and Mythic dungeons. For more information about the Discipline Priest healing rotation, refer to the Rotation page.

For more information on talents as well as alternative talent suggestions for various scenarios, please refer back to the talents page.

Discipline Priests have a unique toolkit that allows us to heal while also providing substantial damage. For Mythic+, added damage is a strong factor when considering any healer. Discipline does not need to sacrifice much healing to contribute damage, making us a very enticing choice for pushing Mythic+ keys. In addition to the damage we provide while healing, we also bring several damage reduction cooldowns, some powerful utility, and the ability to dispel enemies. The primary abilities we have that would be considered utility spells are the following:

• Dispel Magic — This piece of utility allows us to dispel buffs and effects off of enemy targets. This can be valuable in many situations where the buffs on various enemies can make them either significantly more threatening via damage increases or a lot harder to kill via damage reductions.
• Improved Purify — Improved Purify alters our default magic dispel to also remove Disease effects. How useful this is heavily relies on the content you are doing, but in situations where there are disease effects being applied to allies, this utility can have immense value.
• Mind Control / Dominate Mind — Both of these abilities grant us to capability to control an enemy for a short period of time. In most cases, this does not provide significant value, but there have been times in the past where dungeon or raid enemies had extremely powerful spells we could cast by utilizing these abilities. This talent can also be used as a general crowd control ability in many situations as well as niche scenarios to play around mythic plus affixes like Spiteful or Bolstering.
• Void Tendrils — This spell provides a root to a group of enemies but breaks easily when taking damage. This talent is best used when used on a group of enemies you need to hold in place but are not actively trying to kill.
• Shackle Undead — While Undead enemies for Shackle Undead are not the most common thing, this spell is very powerful when it is relevant. Always be on the lookout for Undead enemies to utilize this crowd control ability.
• Mass Dispel — Mass Dispel may be one of our most powerful pieces of utility. The ability to remove magic debuffs from an entire group of allies or from a group of enemies with a single cast is immensely powerful. Many mechanics in both dungeons and raids have been trivialized by this spell over the years, and it will likely remain to do so in the future.
• Psychic Scream — This gives us the capability to fear a group of enemies. This is our only form of AoE crowd control, so utilizing it to interrupt or disrupt large groups of enemies makes it immensely valuable.
• Power Word: Fortitude — While not the most interesting piece of utility, being able to provide a stamina buff to the group or raid is very valuable in many situations. Keep this buff active on your group at all times.
• Power Infusion — Power Infusion is an immensely powerful spell available to us in our talent tree. This ability allows us to provide a significant haste buff to a single player on a two-minute cooldown, most often used on an ally DPS player, especially when considering Twins of the Sun Priestess.

The primary difference you may see between Discipline Priests gearing for Raid content versus Mythic Plus content is that oftentimes, Discipline players may look towards DPS trinkets to push their damage contribution further when they feel like they already have enough healing to handle the required amount for the specific dungeon and key level they are attempting. This is a very personal decision and not something you should default to doing in all cases. When you are just starting out especially, I would recommend sticking to healing or stat proc trinkets first and only shifting to a DPS trinket or two situationally and when you are more comfortable with the specialization.

Keep in mind that the damage from DPS trinkets DOES NOT heal through Atonement, so you are strictly using it for DPS and not healing.

For information on what DPS trinkets can be valuable to include when running Mythic Plus, take a look at our gear page.

The way Mythic+ affixes are tiered in Dragonflight has changed quite a bit since their launch in Legion.

There are three weekly affixes and one seasonal affix. The first affix is available instantly at levels two and three, the second affix starts at level four, the third affix is enabled at level seven, and the seasonal affix is at level ten.

Fortified — Non-boss enemies have 20% more health and inflict up to 30% increased damage. Focus on helping provide damage during trash packs and try to learn which packs need your attention more than others. Certain enemies have buffs that need to be dispelled. Having healing cooldowns ready and available for trash packs will prove beneficial.

Tyrannical — Boss enemies have 40% more health and inflict up to 15% increased damage. In most dungeon boss encounters, we can focus heavy damage on the boss while still healing our group. The importance of quickly killing bosses on Tyrannical is high. Discipline brings quite a few tools to the table to help with that.

Volcanic — In combat, enemies periodically cause gouts of flame to erupt beneath the feet of distant players. This affix is reasonably easy to avoid as a Discipline Priest due to our ability to heal on the move. The issue you will run into here is when other players are getting hit frequently by the ability. Make sure to be ready to top off those who get hit quickly to avoid extra deaths.

Storming — In combat, tornadoes will periodically spawn and move around their spawn area for approximately 10 seconds before despawning. Getting hit by one of these tornadoes will damage you and throw you into the air. There is not much specific advice for this affix except to avoid getting hit.

Afflicted — In combat, Afflicted Souls will spawn that need to be single target healed before they finish their cast, else they will apply a large haste debuff to the party. Power Word: Life will do a lot of heavy lifting for this affix as the souls spawn in at low HP. Having Flash Heal procs or sending a defensive Penance cast into them will help top them up quickly if the Power Word: Life is not enough.

Incorporeal — In combat, incorporeal beings will appear and begin to cast a spell. Interrupting the being or crowd controlling them will cause them to despawn. As a priest, we have access to Shackle Undead with no cooldown to easily handle this, trivializing the affix.

Entangling — In combat, occasionally, vines will snare players, forcing you to run away from the source of the vines to break free or else become stunned. While the vine is attached to you, you are slowed by 50%. Luckily, we have access to Phantasm in the class tree to greatly assist with this mechanic.

Raging — Non-boss enemies enrage at 30% health remaining, becoming CC immune until defeated. Conversely to Bolstering, you would want to help damage down specific enemies one at a time to avoid the increased damage done and reduce the healing required on your team. If, for some reason, the pack is AoE’d down, and you have several low-health enemies, be ready to use your cooldowns, such as Pain Suppression, Rapture, or Power Word: Barrier to counter the damage.

Sanguine — When slain, non-boss enemies leave behind a lingering pool of ichor that heals their allies and damages players. The pools left on the ground have two specific issues that must be dealt with. Firstly, and the most obvious, is your group members (specifically melee DPS) taking damage after killing an enemy; be ready to spot-heal these players quickly. Secondly, enemies that are casting might stand in these pools, which will heal them.

Bolstering — When any non-boss enemy dies, its death cry empowers nearby allies, increasing their damage by 20%. This has a 30-yard range. There is only so much you can do to help besides switching targets to help damage higher-health enemies. If you get 1-2 highly bolstered enemies, be ready to cast Pain Suppression or even Rapture / Power Word: Barrier if it is needed. Mind Control or Dominate Mind can occasionally be used to remove an enemy from combat briefly to avoid them gaining stacks of bolstering.

Bursting — When slain, non-boss enemies explode, causing all players to suffer damage over 4 seconds (this effect stacks.) With the ability to dispel this effect (with both Purify and Mass Dispel) this affix should only provide a little danger if managed horribly. Casting Rapture and covering the party in Power Word: Shield will mitigate many stacks on its own. Power Word: Barrier is also a powerful tool in reducing the damage taken to a more manageable level. In difficult situations, Pain Suppression can be used to ensure you keep a single target alive.

Spiteful causes an enemy to spawn whenever any mob dies. This enemy will fixate on a random player and attempt to melee them for massive damage. They will rapidly lose their health as they stay alive, so throwing crowd control on them until they die on their own is preferred. Void Tendrils is an option for AoE crowd-controlling a group of Spitefuls so that they can not reach their target. Another option is utilizing Dominate Mind to take control of a Spiteful. While the Spiteful is not very useful under your control, you remove its ability to be a threat as well as it helps getting yourself out of combat faster to drink if needed after a pack.

Quaking — Periodically, all players emit a shockwave, inflicting damage and interrupting nearby allies. This affix can be annoying due to the spread requirement and interruptions on your casts. Be sure not to be casting when this ability finishes to avoid being spell-locked. If players are stacked when this goes off, you may have to follow up with some quick healing to top off the group.

Grievous — When injured below 90%, players will suffer increasing damage over time until healed above 90%. Direct heals will remove a stack of Grievous from the target. Attempt to play as aggressively as possible to ensure people do not drop within range of Grievous, to begin with. When multiple players have Grievous simultaneously, try to focus single target heals on the targets with high stacks to keep the damage manageable. Penance can be used to remove multiple stacks with a single cast. Groups with solid off-heals can provide a significant benefit during Grievous weeks.